Gagarin Appreciation Thread

Netrunner General
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Hey all- been repping @whatisthistreachery’s list from a while ago for some time, I think it’s one of the meanest takes on Gagarin (and weyland in general right now). I’ve a few tweaks, and recently took down a small 8-player GNK with a 3-1 record (with the loss coming from a timed loss to a recursionless criminal whose rig I had just wiped with marcus+archer… too bad the agenda I spent on archer put me one point down…). While certainly this isn’t the most competitive scene ever, I’m very convinced that this deck is the upper crust of tier 2, and may be just a few new cards or even list tweaks from being truly competitive.

Anyways, thought I’d post the current list and some thoughts on key includes and see what ideas people might have.

Gagarin Sportstown

Gagarin Deep Space: Expanding the Horizon
49 cards
Influence: 15/15
Agenda points: 20
Agenda (10)
2 Global Food Initiative••
3 NAPD Contract
3 Project Atlas
2 The Future is Now
Asset (11)
1 Capital Investors
1 Corporate Town
2 Jackson Howard••
3 PAD Campaign
2 Public Support
2 Team Sponsorship••
ICE (16)
1 Archer
1 Assassin
1 Caduceus
1 Enigma
1 Fire Wall
2 Ice Wall
1 Ichi 1.0••
1 Meru Mati
3 Spiderweb
2 Tour Guide
1 Wendigo
1 Wormhole
Operation (6)
3 Hedge Fund
3 Paywall Implementation
Upgrade (6)
2 Ash 2X3ZB9CY••••
1 Crisium Grid
2 Expo Grid
1 Marcus Batty•••

Agendas:
Atlas and TFIN: 5 of the agendas generate unviersal tutoring and are never-advance threats (each in their own way). They turn on the decks many powerful one-ofs, and generally just make the deck stupidly versatile and consistant.
NAPD: NAPD isn’t just defensive, here it serves as an aggressive rush agenda. I tutor for them all the time, I’ve scored them naked, with just an Ash for defense, and every which way. The idea is to compound the Gagarin credit pressure and exploit runners who break themselves keeping your stuff trashed.
GFI: the newest include, these live up to their reputation and make RnD a lot less vulnerable. I was having a fine time with HRIs, honestly, but those 3 point chunks definitely lost games. I score them a lot too, having a 3 point option is nice for closing out games in narrow windows.

Assets:
Public support: dream gagarin card. perfect balance between must-trash and no-one-want-to-trash-it, it obviously turns on archer and corp town as well.
Corporate Town: #1 tutor target by far, there are just so, so many decks this card can just annihilate. It can be tricky to pull off and protect, but it’s often worth it. The other way to play it is to purposefully telegraph it to make them trash it over and over when you keep bringing it back with Sponsorship. Worth pointing out, this is one of the hardest DLR counters in the game right now, worth protecting with ash/batty in that matchup.
Team Sponsorship: Need I say anything about this card? it’s must trash, but so many people leave it up. put it in a single-ice server to really deter people, but really it’s win-win no matter what the runner does.
Cap Investors: I go back and forth about this card, as it seems like a “bad” card, but whenever I pull it I end up wishing I had it. Very clutch tutor target against Whizzard/scrubber/imp spam, throw it in the scoring server and push out some credits until you have enough to keep you afloat.

ICE:
I won’t go card-by-card here, but it’s a barrier-heavy mixture of beefy marcus targets and cheap-to-mid-cost gear checks. tour guide is worth a mention, this card is a workhorse: works as a great single layer asset deterrent, where runners are loathe to parasite it, or if they’re leaving your assets unmolested (it happens a lot) it acts as an excellent parasite sponge to help protect your spiderwebs and other actually valuable ICE. did I mention it’s also the absolute cheapest sentry gearcheck around?

Ops:
Paywall implementation: this is a weird card, but man have I made a lot of money on it. it changes the math on throwing out naked assets, deters digs on naked centrals, and just generally works. seems weird to include 3, but I’m always either 1) glad to see a copy or 2) making so much bank on the first copy that there’s no hard feelings.

Upgrades:
These are all pretty self explanatory. defensive upgrades are boss in gagarin, very frequent tutor and recursion targets, and they give the deck just enough of a late game (whether or not the runner is there with you yet :D) to close things out.

Expo grid: generally pulls its weight. even if they are trashing every asset, you can at least throw one in the scoring server and make money while you public support or mash cap investors. In a tight spot it can masquerade as ash to push out early points.

gameplay-wise the plan is nuts-out rush with tutors to bring out spiky setbacks for the runner (like marcus, archer, corp town, even crisium grid) and just enough consistency and taxing tools to set up a light glacier situation very fast to close out.

Changes? Questions? I’ve tried launch campaign, it’s very strong, serves a similar role to cap investors, it’s just tough to find spots for it. The ICE suite feels surprising strong compared to how it looks on paper, but I’m definitely open to suggestions.

6 Likes
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The only slot I’d change if I wanted to sleeve it up would be Expo Grid. I appreciate its upsides but my previous Gagarin attempt had way too many points where it wasn’t generating the credits I needed and would have been better as a PAD Campaign. Seeing as you already have 3 PAD, I’m tempted to go 2x The Root, or 2x Launch Campaign. Might be worth trying each and seeing which works better.

What do you usually find yourself using Batty for? Trashing with Archer/Ichi? Seems like most of the ice is ETR.

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I feel like decks that can hit the remote game well against Gagarin, namely anything Desperado, it makes sense to stack a server. Launches are great in a scoring server, but Roots will need it’s own protection. I can see Batty as a cheaper Caprice at least here, lets you cover a second server without relying on Ash to keep them out.

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No Oaktown?

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285

@Brodie: this is definitely an option, and if I did pull them I would probably slot in launch campaign over the Root (which really needs long term protection). As for Marcus, yes, usually he is on Archer/ichi/assasin trashing duty (or second-hand through wormhole) but he can also be very clutch as a cheaper caprice. Double-duty cards definitely shine here.

@Epimer: oaktown would be a really strong substitute for the GFIs; ultimately though I think card slots and agenda density are more valuable than the upsides of Oaktown. Another tough part a about Oaktown is that I will frequently hide agendas in the remotes (because of the ID many runners are loathe to check unrezzed and unadvanced cards) which isn’t possible with Oaktown. Definitely wouldn’t swap any other agenda for them, though, as the tutors are core part of the deck and NAPD is the most scorable agenda by far.

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I really liked Oaktown as it lets me IAA behind the big Ice and be able to rez it, but between Capital and assets no agenda is going to sit out for long.

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yeah, the agenda hiding thing is more of a fringe benefit, the real thing about GFI is just the card slot and the reduced RnD vulnerability (which is a definite weak spot for any gagarin).

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And you play 0 CVSs? Many decks are playing Medium, Datasuckers are also a problem.

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Still rocking it myself, been out for the holidays. Can’t agree more about going up to 3x Spiderweb and the ICE suite in general. I love how the Paywalls + Capital Investors + Expo Grids allow for a bit of flexibility. Sometimes I throw in a CVS, third Support, or a Root.

I haven’t unsleeved this deck in a long time. It’s a pleasure to play and one of the few decks I can say brim with nothing but optimism about new Mumbad cards that might enhance it further, notably new ICE. I immediately see Bailiff going in for Ice Wall.

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I’m always wondering about Hunter in a single-ice asset server. It fails hard against tag-me, but against everyone else, it seems like it would be at least as annoying as Pup, if not more so.

Maybe it’s just that there aren’t many assets that really work well along that line. It can’t be inconsequential enough that the runner leaves it mostly alone or the trash cost is enough to protect it, yet it also shouldn’t be enough of a high priority that sucking up a tag in order to trash it is a clear-cut decision. The Root and Capital Investors probably are already too much of the latter, PAD Campaign definitely is the former. Daily Business Show or Team Sponsorship seem about right.

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Well it’s also more a piece of ice that’s going to be dedicated to protecting an asset, so that’s one card you can’t have when you want to start scoring.

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Has anyone been playing their Gagarin versus much Adam? I’m finding it very tough. Your best chance is to double ICE HQ with ETR ASAP, but usually I don’t find that ICE fast enough and tend to lose 2-4pts almost immediately on centrals. Even when I do find ICE, Faust usually comes down and I don’t have enough ICE or money left to build a remote. Any tips on playing Gagarin versus Faust Adam?

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I’ve found spiderweb/datapike to be very helpful here. It shuts off ABR in the early game and is still taxing (more so with patch!) when faust eventually comes out. You do need to ice again as soon as e3 hits the table but it gives you a little breathing room. NAPDs can be clutch too. I’ve always found Adam to be pretty poor so even if he can access agendas, he can’t steal them. What does your current Gagarin list look like?

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I played one match against Adam. I had a turn 1 Spiderweb on HQ, and eventually added a Tour guide that always had 2+ subs. He never stood a chance.

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Yeah I run 3 Spiderwebs for centrals but it’s only 3/49. This Adam runs Data Dealer/Faust/e3/Film Critic; pitching 3 cards to Spiderweb isn’t even a huge tax. 3 Armitge for burst Econ when he needs it. I run a couple Quandary over Datapike which is worse v.Adam but they’re generally better for protecting Assets, since without ICE over assets most good runners will just trash everything.

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Started jamming a 7-agenda Gagarin.
I feel if any Weyland ID wants to turtle up behind a big scoring server, it’s probably Gagarin. It doesn’t need to dedicate ICE to protecting their other assets, they protect themselves. Ash is also better out of Gagarin than any other Green ID, being essentially a Trace 5 Trash 4.

3x Spiderweb is definitely a thing. I’ve also been liking Architect in Asset-spam Gagarin, because it’s an actually punishing ICE if the runner facechecks. Changeling is performing well, as is Lotus Field. I don’t bother protecting HQ most games, even against criminal, because of Crisium Grid. I just need to heavily ICE R&D and the scoring remote. As soon as I draw an agenda, IAA into the remote. Public Support lets me score two agendas while the runner needs three. Corporate Town allows me to pitch extra Support to stop Resource-based decks.

The real spice so far has been Encryption Protocol and Patch. Protocol makes everything a real pain to trash, especially if all of them are out. Wanna pay 8 to trash a pad campaign? Patch is brilliant on Architect and Lotus Field alike, as long as they don’t have David. If they do have David, it’s still Fine on Architect, and becomes real good on Spiderweb.

I really need to find enough influence to run a second Ash, he’s so good…

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Got a list? I would be interested in looking at that deck.

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I’ve played the matchup quite a bit with this list, and the matchup hasn’t been too bad. It feels very similar to playing vs a criminal where they have a ton of early pressure, but peter out more by the end. Faust can give a lot of late game reach, so doing what you can early game to keep them off of points is a must. Ash is a super duper good card vs Adam, and I’m really happy to have 2 copies. At some point in the game, if I can get a Corporate town on the board, I try and blow up Always Be Running, the earlier the better. Turning off his ability to click past ICE is really nice, even if it does give him another useful click. I’ll usually not blow up Neutralize All Threats, because if I can get ABR off the board I’m not as worried about HQ accesses, and making him trash my shit keeps him super poor.

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Accounting for mulligans even with just 3 spiderswebs, that’s a 50% chance to see at least 1 in your opening hand. If you can find room for another piece of multisub etr then there should be a pretty good chance of being able to stuff adam turn 1.

I further disincentive runners from going after remotes by having architects and paywalls up. It seems to work pretty well.

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Interesting, I find the Criminal match up very easy but not the Adam. In my experience Adam only has a weak mid game, with a monster early and late game. I could try slotting a single caduceus, but I do already have 2 Enigma 2 Architect and 3 Spiderweb for multi sub ICE. I probably just need to mulligan hard for Spiderweb and practice more versus Adam.